The president elect Joe Biden could reportedly have an impact on the way that the Chicago Bulls host home games at the United Center next season.
We’re roughly a month and a half away from the planned start of the 2020-21 NBA regular season, and it will be nice to see Chicago Bulls basketball back in action for the first time in quite a while. The last meaningful game action the Bulls played in was back in mid-March. More specifically, the last game they played in prior to the pause in the wake of the novel coronavirus pandemic was in a home win at the United Center over the divisional foe Cleveland Cavaliers on March 10.
The planned start to the 2020-21 NBA regular season is now set for Dec. 22. Getting the pre-Christmas start date in line for the 2020-21 season means that Training Camp will begin around the NBA landscape on Dec. 1. That is not a very long time for the rest of the offseason timeline to play out.
Considering the league still has to get through the next cycle of free agency, the 2020 NBA Draft (set to take place on the night of Nov. 18), and the opening of the trade market, there’s a lot to do before the first day of December. It also really crunches the offseason timeline for rebuilding teams around the league, like the Bulls.
One of the big looming questions for the start of the next regular season is how many, if any, fans can be in attendance at various home arenas. And apparently one monumental event for the country this month, the presidential election, could play a role in how the NBA plans out their attendance at each team’s arena next season.
It’s unclear apparently how the presidency of the former United States vice president Joe Biden will impact the NBA next season, but it likely will in some regard. According to a report from USA Today this weekend, there is skepticism among the major four professional sports leagues as to how Biden will handle COVID-19 “hotspots” around the country for the next set of regular seasons.
Here’s more on what that report had to say on the matter.
"Biden has appeared more willing than Trump to aggressively address COVID-19 in the short term with hopes that it will curtail the spread of the disease in the long term. He has supported a national mask mandate and said in August that he would implement a national lockdown if scientists recommend taking that step.“If you have a reproduction rate in a community that’s above a certain level, everybody says, slow up,” Biden said during a presidential debate. “More social distancing. Do not open bars and do not open gymnasiums. Do not open until you get this under control, under more control.”"
There’s also no clear indication yet as to what the Bulls 2020-21 regular season schedule will look like. We’re sure to get a clearer picture of what the schedule will look like in the near future, as the season is roughly six weeks away from tipping off.
However, there’s still a lot to work through in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. And this report from USA Today actually mentions a more straightforward picture for the relationship between the White House and the sports world now.
The Bulls finished up the 2019-20 shortened regular season in the wake of the COVID-19 outbreak with a record of 22-43, good for 11th place in the Eastern Conference standings. If nothing else, the Bulls will be back to work for the first time since last month at the Advocate Center, with Training Camp beginning Dec. 1.